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Fatal Flaw?
- Thread starter Deacon
- Start date
God is not the author of sin.
But God, for His own high purposes, did not choose to make us so many Stepford wives without ability to choose. He gave us free will, knowing that we would fall into sin by our own deliberate fault. But for that eventuality, He had already devised a plan to rescue a vast number of guilty humans by satisfying His own justice through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and drawing men and women to HImself by faith though the Holy Spirit, not counting their sins against them.
But God, for His own high purposes, did not choose to make us so many Stepford wives without ability to choose. He gave us free will, knowing that we would fall into sin by our own deliberate fault. But for that eventuality, He had already devised a plan to rescue a vast number of guilty humans by satisfying His own justice through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and drawing men and women to HImself by faith though the Holy Spirit, not counting their sins against them.
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
As you said God draws man to Himself, He does not cause them to either believe or not believe.
So man uses his God given free will to make the choice to either trust in or reject God.
If that's what you think, carry on. This is not, praise God, the Cal vs Arm forum. I was replying to the O.P. I suggest you do too.
...don't forget about the angels. Them too:
2nd Peter Chapter 2
4 | For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; |
Jude Chapter 1
6 | And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. |
The whole creation groans.
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I believe Adam was made upright, but then God planted a Garden and took Adam from the land where he was made and put Adam in this Garden - in His very presence as God walked in this Garden.
Adam was created flesh, but flesh and blood will not inherit God's kingdom. The "flaw" was not in the making of Adam, but Adam lacked the righteousness to exist in God's presence (Adam was flesh, with the desires of the flesh but without spiritual life).
I believe the Fall was ultimately a part of God greater creation (His kingdom, a chosen race of believers who are a priesthood serving Him and exhibiting His glory).
I would not call it a "flaw", though. I think of it more as natural man being kinda like seeds. The seed must die for the plant to grow (the ultimate goal being the plant).
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
The OP asked if God had purposefully designed humans with a fatal flaw?
Did you not say that man has a free will and that God draws man to Himself in your response to the OP.
So my response to you and also responded to the OP.
Now if you want to see it as dealing with C/A then you are reading that into the text.
Agree fully with that. What's happening here is a spectacle for every creature in the universe to watch.
Ephesians Chapter 3
8 | Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; |
9 | and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God who created all things; |
10 | to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, |
11 | according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: |
Yes!
The first human, Adam, was created with the ability to sin. Note that before Adam was created, Logos was chosen to be the Lamb of God, therefore God anticipated sin and the fall of humanity. And, in our fallen state, it brings glory to God when we repent. Game, set and match!
I didn't want this to fall into a C/A debate, so purposefully passed on putting it in that forum.
Reformed theology's emphasis on God's sovereignty doesn't preclude the holding of a free-will position.
~~~~~~~
I’m reading: What about Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory. by Scott Christensen (2020)
But he's also written a shorter, more reader friendly edition: Defeating Evil, How God Glorifies Himself in a Dark World (2024)
[I'd recommend the reader-friendly edition!]
Christensen takes a compatibilist position, (with an emphasis on Christology).
Compatalist believe that God’s absolute sovereignty coexists with genuine free-will, making humanity moral responsible for choices they make.
His theodicy, which he calls “the greater-glory theodicy,”
“… meets the two criteria that Greg Welty proposes for a faithful theodicy.
The first criterion says that the goods God pursues in the face of evil must be dependent on those evils. … The supreme glory that God receives through redemption … is clearly dependent on the fall of mankind and the manifold evils it produced. …
Welty’s second criterion says that the goods pursued in the face of evil must be weighty and important enough to justify the evils that produce those goods. ..." (WAE, p. 287)
Christensen's position is that God permits and even ordained evil because, within his sovereign plan, its defeat through Christ produces a greater glory than would have been possible if the evil never existed.
This is not a particularly new idea. A similar view is expressed in John Piper's Desiring God website.
"In Christian theology, to “ordain” evil means that God, from all eternity, has decided and planned for certain sinful actions or events to occur, not because He loves or approves of sin, but because He sees them as part of a greater good purpose."
I'm struggling with this position!
Rob
Reformed theology's emphasis on God's sovereignty doesn't preclude the holding of a free-will position.
~~~~~~~
I’m reading: What about Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory. by Scott Christensen (2020)
But he's also written a shorter, more reader friendly edition: Defeating Evil, How God Glorifies Himself in a Dark World (2024)
[I'd recommend the reader-friendly edition!]
Christensen takes a compatibilist position, (with an emphasis on Christology).
Compatalist believe that God’s absolute sovereignty coexists with genuine free-will, making humanity moral responsible for choices they make.
His theodicy, which he calls “the greater-glory theodicy,”
“… meets the two criteria that Greg Welty proposes for a faithful theodicy.
The first criterion says that the goods God pursues in the face of evil must be dependent on those evils. … The supreme glory that God receives through redemption … is clearly dependent on the fall of mankind and the manifold evils it produced. …
Welty’s second criterion says that the goods pursued in the face of evil must be weighty and important enough to justify the evils that produce those goods. ..." (WAE, p. 287)
Christensen's position is that God permits and even ordained evil because, within his sovereign plan, its defeat through Christ produces a greater glory than would have been possible if the evil never existed.
This is not a particularly new idea. A similar view is expressed in John Piper's Desiring God website.
"In Christian theology, to “ordain” evil means that God, from all eternity, has decided and planned for certain sinful actions or events to occur, not because He loves or approves of sin, but because He sees them as part of a greater good purpose."
I'm struggling with this position!
Rob
I’ve heard it preached; ‘When all of this is said and done and time is no more, every creature in the universe will know there only be One Will.’
Ben1445
Well-Known Member
God did not describe His creation that way. I would not either.
Maybe there is a better way to phrase the question that doesn’t sound so much like did God make a mistake on purpose during creation.
The flaw was our desire to be independent from God, that's more than just a freedom or capability to choose.
I chose the term "Fatal Flaw" as a counter to Christensen's "Greater Glory" (FF vs. GG).
Christensen chose to center the focus on God, I'm focused (now) upon mankind's current suffering and pain.
Another book I've been interacting with recently is The Problem Of Pain by C.S. Lewis.
In The Problem with Pain, Lewis asserts that creatures without the freedom to choose cannot have the same moral relationship as one who has the ability to choose to be in that relationship.
This freedom was abused by mankind, we choose to be independent from our Creator (Lewis, TPoP, p. 76f).
Even now, our existence is continually dependent upon God.
Man's tragedy was not that he was given freedom from God, but that he desired freedom from dependence upon God.
We chose to cut ourselves off, to separate ourselves, from the source from which we were made.
The flaw was this desire for independence.
That is where pain and suffering begins (ibid, ch. 6. "Human Pain")
Rob
I chose the term "Fatal Flaw" as a counter to Christensen's "Greater Glory" (FF vs. GG).
Christensen chose to center the focus on God, I'm focused (now) upon mankind's current suffering and pain.
Another book I've been interacting with recently is The Problem Of Pain by C.S. Lewis.
In The Problem with Pain, Lewis asserts that creatures without the freedom to choose cannot have the same moral relationship as one who has the ability to choose to be in that relationship.
This freedom was abused by mankind, we choose to be independent from our Creator (Lewis, TPoP, p. 76f).
Even now, our existence is continually dependent upon God.
Man's tragedy was not that he was given freedom from God, but that he desired freedom from dependence upon God.
We chose to cut ourselves off, to separate ourselves, from the source from which we were made.
The flaw was this desire for independence.
That is where pain and suffering begins (ibid, ch. 6. "Human Pain")
Rob
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I also hold that position.
Tim Keller touched on this when dealing with the importance of our choices and predestination. His conclusion was it is not something we can fully grasp because we are not God.
When we look closely, at the "trees", we see man's will as almost the same in kind as God's will but typically as opposing forces. But when we look at a wider scope, at the "forrest", we cannot help but see compatability.
Adam was made flesh. His desires were of the flesh. He chose to sin. This had to also be God's will (plan, not desire) as Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (which without the Fall is unnecessary).
I believe Adam was simply not made to stand in the presence of God (I believe it is important that Adam was not formed in the Garden and was returned to where he was made after he sinned).
The "trees" show us our struggle. But if we look at the "forrest" we see this present creation is temporary, is a step towards a new creation.
Anthony Pritchard
Well-Known Member
"He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he." Deuteronomy 32:4
Alan Dale Gross
Well-Known Member
I didn't think Deacon gets my posts, but here is some of my go-to as to what makes "humanity morally responsible for choices they make." Plus a new thread to futhur considerations about "Human Responsibility".
"By Human Responsibility we mean man's Accountability to God for all of his actions. The Teaching of man's Accountability is so general in the Bible that no Scripture citations are needed. Any one that is at all acquainted with the Bible should be able with no difficulty to find plenty of proof texts on this subject."
"I. HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD"
"1. THE MEANING OF GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY."
"The absolute sovereignty of God means just what Paul affirms in Eph. 1:11, where he speaks of God as one that "Worketh all things after the Counsel of His Will."
"This teaches just what the Philadelphia Confession of Faith teaches when it says: "God hath Decreed in Himself from all Eernity, by the most Wise and Holy Counsel of His Own Will, Freely and Unchangeably, all things whatsoever Comes to Pass." Other passages teaching the absolute sovereignty of God are as follows:
"Who knoweth not in all these, that the Hand of Jehovah hath Wrought this,
in Whose Hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all Mankind" (Job 12:9,10).
"Jehovah hath Established His Throne in the Heavens; and His Kingdom Ruleth Over all" (Psa. 103:19).
"Whatsoever Jehovah Pleased, that hath He Done,
in Heaven and in Earth, in the seas and all deeps" (Psa. 135:6).
"Who is He that saith, and it Cometh to Pass, when the Lord Commandeth it not?
Out of the Mouth of the Most High Cometh there not evil and good?" (Lam. 3:37,38).
"I Form the light, and Create darkness; I Make Peace, and Create evil;
I Am Jehovah, that Doeth all these things" (Isa. 45:7).
"I Am God, and there is none like Me; Declaring the End from the Beginning, and from Ancient Times things that are not yet done; saying, My Counsel shall Stand, and I Will Do all My Pleasure" (Isa. 46:10).
"All the inhabitants of the Earth are reputed as nothing;
and He doeth According to His Will in the Army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the Earth;
and none can stay His Hand, or say unto Him, What doest thou?" (Dan. 4:35).
"At that season Jesus answered and said,
I thank Thee 0 Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth,
that Thou didst Hide these things from the wise and understanding,
and didst Reveal them unto babes" (Matt. 11:25).
"Jesus Answered him,
Thou couldest have no power against Me, except it were Given thee from Above" (John 19:11).
"I Will have Mercy on whom I have Mercy, and I will have Compassion on whom I have Compassion.
So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath Mercy.
"For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very Purpose did I Raise thee up,
that I might show in thee My Power, and that My Name might be published abroad in all the Earth.
"So then He hath Mercy on whom He Will, and whom He Will He Hardeneth" (Rom. 9:15-18).
See also Acts 2:2,3 and 4:27,28."
From: HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY.
NEW THREAD: How can Man be Responsible for his Actions
when all that he does has been Ordained and Decreed of God?
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